The Legend of the Undying Man
by Chillmaster3000
Summary: After a mark mentions the Undying Man, Eliot tells the team the legend surrounding the man who can't die. Mid-Season Three in the first chapter, Post Season 5 in later chapters. Spoilers for series finale.
1. Chapter 1

The team gathers in Nate's apartment after a long job. Eliot has busied himself in the kitchen, and certainly no one else on the team will try and stop him. Hardison sets the table with Parker. Nate and Sophie pour drinks, Sophie glaring slightly at what Nate pours for himself. Hardison sits first.

"What do you think about that stuff the mark was talking about? That Undying Man stuff?" he asks as Sophie and Nate come to sit at the table.

"Oh, it's an old story. Been hearing it for ages," Nate says. "Supposedly there's this guy who can't die who likes to cause trouble for people. Mostly bad people, if you believe the stories. They call him the Undying Man because he can't be killed."

"The Undying Man sounds like a fairy tale," Parker observes, sitting at the table. "Like, once upon a time, there was a man who couldn't die, and they called him the Undying Man."

"That's not a very creative fairy-tale," Sophie says.

"It doesn't go like that," Eliot says. They turn to look at him as he brings over a pan full of seared fish and he stops mid stride. "What?"

"Are you saying there's actually a fairy tale about the Undying Man?" Nate asks. Eliot shrugs.

"Of course there is. You think a guy can hang around for more than a thousand years and not become a legend?" he says as he puts some of the fish on Parker's plate.

"Do you know it?" Parker says. Eliot nods, moving on to Hardison's plate. "Tell us!"

"Yeah, man, tell us the Legend of the Undying Man." Hardison wiggles his fingers in the air for dramatic effect. Eliot looks at Nate and Sophie.

"I want to hear it! I love a good story," Sophie says as Eliot puts the fish on her plate.

"Who doesn't?" Nate adds. Eliot finishes plating the fish and brings the pan back to the island in the kitchen.

"Fine. I'll tell you the legend," he says as he comes back. "You just gotta promise me one thing: none of you will ever make fun of the God in it."

"Why, what happens if we make fun of the God?" Hardison asks. Eliot sits down.

"You'll die horribly within 24 hours. Seriously, don't do it," he says.

"I won't. You won't, Parker, right?"

"I don't believe in Gods," Parker says.

"You don't have to believe in the God, you just can't make fun of the God," Eliot answers.

"Okay, then I won't. Tell me the fairy tale." Parker takes some of the fish on her fork and puts it in her mouth as if eating his food would get Eliot to talk faster. Eliot glances around the table before beginning.

"It starts when he's just a baby," he says. "He was born in the 800s in Scandinavia. It would later become Norway, but not for a very long time. The Undying Man was born to a blacksmith and his wife. They'd had other kids, but all of them had died shortly after being born. It seemed like this son was going to die too, and his father refused to look at him. His mother prayed to every god she could think of to save the child. She prayed and prayed until she passed out from exhaustion. While she was sleeping, she heard an unearthly voice." Eliot coughs and lowers his voice. They expect it to be funny, but it's actually disturbing.

" _Your child shall not die_."

"What was it?" Sophie asks.

"It was the God," Eliot says.

"One of the Norse Gods?" Nate says.

"No, it was _the_ God," Eliot says again. "It's just the God."

"But that doesn't make sense. The Vikings had a vast pantheon of Gods-"

"Nate, shut up and let Eliot tell the story!" Parker says. Nate raises his hands in surrender.

"Thanks, Parker. Anyway, the next morning, the mother wakes up and the baby's kicking and yelling like a normal, happy baby," Eliot says. "His mother thanks the Gods and brings him to his father, who says it's a sign that their son will grow to be a great man."

"The baby grows up into a young man. He's not interested in blacksmithing like his dad, he wants to be an explorer. His father doesn't mind, since one of the son's friends is interested in blacksmithing, so the son goes and joins up on a Viking ship."

"And bashed in some heads," Hardison says with a nod. Eliot narrows his eyes.

"No. He was on an exploration vessel," he says. "The Vikings didn't just bash in heads. They were also tradesmen, and they travelled as far as Tunisia to trade. He was one of those Vikings."

"Did he go to Tunisia?" Sophie says.

"Not at that point. He did land in Spain and Portugal a few times, but they started to notice something weird about him," Eliot says. "While they were at sea, some of the men got sick. Everyone who got sick died. Every single one of them."

"He was one of the last ones sick, and he was the last one alive. It was one of those sicknesses where you feel like you're freezing, but you're actually burning up with a fever and you dehydrate from it. Anyway, he starts to slip away and he knows that he's going to die, when this face appears in front of him. The face is horrifying and beautiful at the same time, the same way a tsunami is right before it destroys everything around you. And its voice is like glass breaking on a marble floor. It says to him:"

" _You shall not die_." Eliot's voice is that same disturbing lowness as before. Then he shrugs and continues in a normal voice.

"Then he starts to feel better. The next day, he's up and walking around the ship again, and everyone on it thinks he's been blessed by the Gods." Eliot lifts his hands with a smile. "They get back to the town and the sailors start telling everyone how he survived this terrible illness, how he's been gifted by the gods. He just tells them he got lucky. He doesn't tell them about the face he saw."

"Why not?" Hardison says.

"Even then, seeing faces like that made you sound crazy," Eliot says.

"But what was it?" Nate asks.

"I'm not sure. It might be the God, but it's weird that They'd show Their face like that," Eliot says.

"They?" Sophie repeats.

"Yeah. They." Eliot sounds almost offended.

"Keep going," Parker urges.

"So, things go back to normal after that. He meets a girl in his town and they start, you know, courting. Then the town gets attacked," Eliot says.

"That's a quick change of plot," Nate remarks.

"NATE!"

"Sorry, keep going."

"The town gets attacked. Our guy takes up arms like everyone else, trying to defend the town, and he gets an axe to the gut," Eliot says, miming a blow to his stomach. "This don't kill you right off, so he's lying there for a while his father and his mother and his girl are fighting around him-"

"Wait, his mother and his girl?" Hardison says.

"Women Vikings fought too. Better than he did at the time, he was kinda a pansy-ass thing then. But he's lying there, dying, and everyone can see him now. He's not alone like he was on the ship. Then the face appears over him again and tells him:"

" _You shall not die."_

"And he doesn't. His gut heals up and he joins the fight again," Eliot says. "This time everyone sees him come back, and everyone's like, 'what the hell?' So he gets called in front of goði, the chief, and he's on trial."

"For what?" Sophie says. Eliot shrugs.

"The Vikings don't have charges like we do. They were mostly pissed that he upset the Nornar, their version of the Fates, by not dying when he was supposed to. Vikings were incredibly superstitious, and they thought upsetting the Nornar was going to reflect badly on the whole town. So they drag him up to the front and the goði starts questioning him. Is he a witch, did he carve protection runes, did he make sacrifices to the Gods, what did he do to bring this on? And our guy didn't do anything, so he's just standing there confused as all get out. Then they bring his parents up there and ask if they were witches, did they carve protection runes, did they call upon the Gods? Which is when his mother tells the goði about the night he was born and the voice she heard."

"What does the goði do?" Parker asks in a hushed voice.

"The goði decided that the Nornar must have heard his mother's prayers and blessed our guy to live a long prosperous life," Eliot says. "Our guy is free to go. He asks his mother about the voice she heard and she tells him that it sounded like a thousand swan songs shrieking over the valley. He knows it's the same voice he heard, but he doesn't tell anyone about it."

"Not much interesting happens for a long time after that. He courts his girl, he goes on a few more trading expeditions, he nearly dies a few more times, he marries his girl. Then his girl gets pregnant and he starts getting worried about this whole not-dying thing. Somebody points out that he doesn't look any older than he did a couple years ago when he first started going on expeditions. So our guy starts praying to the Gods at the temple for answers. Nothing happens. One night, on his way back from a temple, he falls asleep under a large tree. He didn't plan on it, he was walking past and wham-" Eliot smacks his palm on the table. "-he falls asleep while still walking."

"Was it the God?" Nate says. Eliot nods.

"Our guy is in total darkness. He can't see a thing. That voice he knows rushes in and fills the space like a wind tunnel." Eliot coughs.

" _Speak, child of man."_

"Are you the one who blessed me with life?"

 _"What makes you think it was a blessing?"_ Eliot's eyes grow wild at this. Nate and Sophie exchange a look.

"Well, because I'm not dead."

 _"That is not a blessing! You are not blessed!_ The voice tells him. _You will never die! You will live as long as there is life in the Universe, and perhaps beyond that. You will watch your children, your grandchildren, and your grandchildren's grandchildren wither and die before your eyes! You are a cursed man!"_

"Why have I been cursed? Who are you to curse me?"

 _"I am They Who Are, They Who Have Always Been, They Who Always Shall Be. I am the Creator of Time, Space, and Life, and I will not be questioned by my Creations!"_ Eliot's eyes go back to normal and he coughs again. He continues casually.

"Then our guy wakes up. He knows what just happened was an audience with the God, and that's as much of an answer as he's going to get on the subject," he says. "So he heads home to his wife and he tells her what's happened. She tells him she's sticking with him as long as she can."

"But he's going to have to watch her die," Nate says.

"He's going to have to watch everyone die. That's the thing about not dying," Eliot says. "Everyone else dies, and all he can do is move on."

"So what happens next?" Parker asks.

"That's the end of the Legend. He has to face the future," Eliot says.

"But what happens to him next? He's obviously still doing stuff, he's not dead at the end," Parker says.

"It's not part of the Legend."

"Come on, Eliot! Tell me what happens to him!" Parker insists.

"Yeah, that's no way to end a story," Nate says.

"Fine," Eliot grumbles. "Fine. Time goes on. Our guy and his wife have a daughter. They name her Dagny, which means 'new day.'"

"What's our guy's name?" Hardison asks. Eliot pauses, looking pained.

"Elof."

"Elof? That sounds like a dog noise!" Sophie says.

"It means eternity's heir," Eliot says.

"Wait, so his mother named him something that means forever before she knew he would live forever? Does she ever even find out he'll live forever?" Nate says.

"No, he doesn't- look, if you don't like the legend, you can make up your own," Eliot says, getting irritated again.

"What's his wife's name?" Parker asks quickly.

"Idunn," Eliot tells her, his voice softer. "Idunn means to love again."

"Oh, that's romantic," Sophie says. A smile grows on her face and she glances at Nate, who blushes and looks at his plate.

"Yeah, Idunn tells him to take it literally after she passes on," Eliot says. "Anyway, Dagny grows up, going on trading trips with Elof and helping Idunn protect the village. There's no sign that Dagny's like her dad, but they worry anyway. Elof dies in front of Dagny and has to explain what's going on when she's…fourteen? Fifteen? She's almost an adult. So Elof tells Dagny what's happened. The first thing she asks is if she's the same. And he can't tell her. He doesn't know which would be worse- if she is or if she isn't."

"Soon enough Dagny's old enough to get married. She has her eye on one of the local boys. By this time, everybody in the village knows about Elof and nobody questions the fact that Dagny's father looks like he's her brother. The engagement is made, and by the time the marriage is held, Dagny looks older than Elof. They take that as a sign that Dagny is not like her father in that way. Elof is both relieved and devastated by the realization."

"Why is he relieved?" Parker asks. "He's going to be alone."

"Dagny's not going to have to watch everyone she knows die," Nate says before Eliot answers. "She'll be spared his fate. No father wants that for his child." He doesn't have to explain the devastation- they all have seen what losing a child does to someone.

"We don't need to get into all that," Eliot says. "What happens next is that the family moves around, moving from village to village as the generations marry into new families. For whatever reason, every generation ends up being only one kid, so Elof can just follow the family tree as it travels. They all know that he's their ancestor, even though he still looks like he's twenty, and he's treated with the same respect as a grandfather. That changes when they leave Scandinavia."

"Why do they leave Scandinavia?" Sophie asks.

"Trade," Eliot says. "There's money to be made in Southern Europe. The latest man of the family learned to blow glass and that was easier to do in warmer places. They ended up in Poland, which was Prussia then."

"Lucky for them," Nate says.

"What do you mean?" Hardison says.

"Poland was the least affected by the Black Plague, which would be starting in a couple hundred years," Nate says.

"Why do you know that?" Hardison replies. Nate shrugs.

"Nate's right. Poland was pretty safe during the Plague years," Eliot says. "There were a couple reasons, mostly that the Polish didn't kill the cats like most of Western Europe did. They also had a large, mostly unbothered Jewish population who had a lot better sanitary practices than most of Europe at the time. One of Elof's great granddaughters, the daughter of the glass-blower, converts to Judaism and marries into a Jewish family."

"Uh-oh," Sophie says. Eliot nods.

"Yeah. Thing is, there's no place in the Jewish theology for something like Elof. He has to keep his distance to make sure they don't freak out and burn him at stake. The great-granddaughter tells her husband's family that he's a cousin, and that's what her son is told. She doesn't tell her son the real story before she dies."

"Why doesn't Elof tell him?" Parker asks.

"Why would he believe a guy he doesn't see all that much?" Eliot says. "Elof just goes with it. Nobody lives long enough to figure out that he's not aging, so things go smoothly. Once the worst of the plague is over, Elof goes travelling around Europe."

"He sees the Renaissance spread around Europe. Elof sees the printing press become a commonplace thing, and he learns to read in whatever language he can get someone to teach him. He learns a lot at this time, including that there is an overwhelming majority of Europeans who don't like Jews. This one day, he's hanging out with some painters- and you know, painters are real dicks- and in that period, European painters did a lot of Biblical stuff. Elof asks the painters why Jesus looks so European, since you know, the guy was Jewish. Even Elof knows that, and he hasn't finished reading the Bible yet. The painters all look at him like he's asked to sleep with their boyfriends."

"I imagine it doesn't get better," Sophie says.

"It varies, person to person," Eliot says. "He stays close when things get hairy, but he has to keep moving. Elof actually ends up in Italy a lot- or the nation states that make up Italy. It's a center of trade and art, so he's not usually bored. He meets more people there than he's ever met in one place before."

"Which is saying something for such an old dude," Hardison laughs.

"Yeah," Eliot agrees with a smile. "After a while though, he gets pulled into wars. Mostly he does it to keep whatever young man in his family out of whatever war's going on. The Great Northern War of 1721, the War of Polish Succession in 1733, the Polish Russian War of 1792, the War of the First Coalition."

"That's a lot of fighting," Nate observes.

"Elof's getting better at it. He doesn't get killed nearly as much, which is good since he doesn't want to get discovered and burned at stake," Eliot says. "He's managed to avoid it so far, but he isn't big on finding out what it's actually like."

"Eventually the Polish government gets its bearings back and realizes that he's the same guy signing up for every war and showing up every couple decades with the same face. They offer him a job as a spy. In exchange, his family will be protected from the anti-Semite risings that happen every so often. With that assurance, Elof takes up their offer. Within fifty years, he becomes the worst-kept secret in all of Europe."

"Everybody knows he's a spy?" Parker asks.

"Some idiot starts telling people that the Polish government has an unkillable spy. Naturally, every other country tries to find him and kill him," Eliot says. "This isn't a good time for Elof."

"I'll bet it's not," Nate says.

"How long does it take for them to give up?" Sophie says.

"About eighty years. World War One distracts everybody from everything else they had going," Eliot answers. "That's not usually how it works. Before then, a war was something you could run while you had your other political shit going on, but this is the biggest war Elof had ever seen. He doesn't disagree when they call it the Great War. He does think 'the war to end all wars' is a load of crap, though. Elof's seen too much of humanity go by to think that the fighting will stop just yet."

"What does he think is going to happen?" Nate says.

"Wars only end because somebody can't fight anymore. The loser always builds themselves back up again and declares war back, so the League of Nations tries to make sure that doesn't happen," Eliot says. "They destroy the Weimar Republic- Germany's old name- with economic restrictions and war debts. Elof thinks there's gonna be a mighty revenge for that one."

"What does he do?" Hardison asks. Eliot shrugs.

"Not much he can do but watch. The Weimar Republic collapses under war debt as expected. Elof's seen enough to know that somebody's gonna go pick up the pieces to strike back after the dust settles, and the National Socialist party takes up the task. He knows things are only going to get worse, so he goes to the Polish government and tells them to get ready. They send Elof to the guys in MI6 to learn about the British military and help the Poles with theirs," Eliot says. "MI6 is _thrilled_ to have him, of course, and they start sending him on missions. It takes Elof a little while to figure out that MI6 is using him and not teaching him what he wants to know, but he doesn't find out Poland's been invaded until a year after it's happened. By then his family's been shipped off to a concentration camp."

"Oh, no," Parker murmurs. Eliot acts like he didn't hear. He stares at a space over Parker's head, eyes distant.

"Elof keeps working with MI6. The only way to find and rescue his family is to win the war. So he goes where he's told, does what he's told. V-E Day is the day after he's sent to Japan to escort the MI6 agents stationed there out," Eliot says. "He hears about an American secret weapon, and he stays to satisfy his own curiosity about it."

"That's a terrible idea," Hardison says.

"They think he figured that out," Eliot replies in a dry voice.

"They think?"

"He didn't report back after Hiroshima," Eliot says. "The bomb fell and MI6 didn't hear from him again. Poland didn't either, once they got their shit back together. There hasn't been a confirmed sighting since 1945."

"But he can't be dead. He's the Undying Man!" Sophie says. "I mean, there's plenty of talk about him, even now. He can't have been killed for good!"

"Yeah, that God of his said he would never die. Do people really believe that an atomic bomb was outside the realm of the God's control?" Nate adds.

"Some people do. Other people think he might have had his mind reset, or that he was so radioactive he developed cancer and that killed him," Eliot says. "But there's another theory. One that I think makes more sense."

"Which is?" Sophie prompts.

"He walked away from Hiroshima and went back to Poland, only to find the extent of the things the Nazis did to their Jewish prisoners. Elof was so horrified, the theory says, that he swore he'd never ally himself with a nation or a people again. Then he disappeared to make it so," Eliot says. He picks up his beer and takes a sip while the other four digest that theory. Then Eliot puts the bottle down. "Of course, that's not the only reason people still tell the Legend of the Undying Man."

"Why do they still tell it?" Parker asks.

"There's another part of the legend I didn't tell you yet. See, Elof was around a really long time. He accumulated a lot of stuff, including tapestries, carvings, paintings, and statues of his family members. There's also rumors saying that once he learned to write, Elof started writing everything down," Eliot says. "He needed a place to keep all this stuff, so they say he got himself a cave or a vault to lock it up in. The place would probably have everything he got over the years. Things like money, treasure, art from ages past. Finding his stash would make you a very rich person."

"So people are still looking for it," Nate says.

"Yeah. Nobody's ever come close to finding it, though," Eliot says.

"How do you know?" Hardison says.

"The books," Eliot replies. "If somebody found the stash, the first thing they'd do is get the books authenticated so they could sell 'em. Then they'd start advertising, and I'd hear about it."

"You don't think they'd keep the books to themselves?" Hardison says. Eliot shakes his head.

"Too many people would pay too much money for those books."

"Have you ever gone looking for the stash?" Parker says.

"I had better things to do than chase a story." Eliot picks up his beer again. "That's all there is to the Legend of the Undying Man, a story. No point in looking any further." Finality permeates his voice and his face. The others don't press the matter.

"Explains why our mark was so easy to lure into a treasure hunt," Nate remarks.

"Seriously. If you believe in one legend, you'll believe in them all," Sophie says. "Did you know, there's this legend about a star that fell to Earth…"

The conversation leaves the Undying Man far behind as the team gets into their favorite legends. No one is surprised that Nate is a big Arthurian nerd, or that Hardison knows a ridiculous amount about werewolves, zombies, and vampires. An actual, intense argument arises over vampires and what they can and can't do. It seems as though the Undying Man has been cast aside long before they leave the table.

"Eliot?" Parker puts a hand on Eliot's forearm after they bring their dishes to the sink. Nate and Sophie are still by the table with Hardison, insisting that vampires are affected by crosses, and none of them can hear Parker's soft voice.

"Yeah?" Eliot answers.

"Thanks for telling us the Legend," Parker says. Eliot shrugs.

"It wasn't a big deal." He turns to the sink and begins doing the dishes. Parker's hand lingers on his arm a moment longer before turning to shout that vampires don't sparkle and that's the only thing that matters.


	2. Chapter 2

It is not for a long while that they really talk about the Undying Man again. Nate and Sophie seem to have made an agreement to never bring it up again. Hardison occasionally researches a few of the things Eliot mentioned in the legend, but he quickly finds out that asking for more details just makes Eliot scowl and leave the room. Parker is the only one willing to talk about it with Hardison.

The two spend their 'vacation-' the break the team takes after Dubenich comes back for his revenge- following up the leads Hardison found on the Undying Man. There isn't much evidence to find. Most of what happened to Elof was so ordinary it didn't leave much to be remembered. Parker does not try to get Hardison to explore caves in the region to look for Elof's stash. She does get him to jump off some really tall buildings with her, which is way more fun anyway.

Getting the team back together brings no change to the Undying Man situation. Nate and Sophie won't talk about it. They change the subject to something else, anything else. Eliot continues to remain silent on Elof. Parker and Hardison decide to stop asking about it long before Nate and Sophie leave the team.


	3. Chapter 3

It's been a few months since their team shrank to three; Parker calls Sophie every so often, and occasionally they have to go pull each other out of trouble. When Eliot asks Hardison to get them tickets to Geneva, the younger man assumes it's to help out Nate and Sophie.

"All right, where to?" Hardison asks when they walk through the Swiss airport. "Where are they?"

"Where are who?" Eliot repeats.

"Aren't we here to see Nate and Sophie?" Hardison says.

"Yeah, I thought that's why we came too," Parker says.

"I never said we were- We're here to see something," Eliot says. "Something important."

"What something?" Parker asks.

"I'll tell you when we get there," Eliot says. Hardison finds that very cryptic and very unhelpful. Eliot's not usually forthcoming anyway, but he doesn't usually drag them across the ocean either.

They rent a car, which Eliot drives to one of the large banks famed for discretion. Hardison's used one or two of the Swiss banks, hacked a couple too, but not this one. Though this bank is very old, it regularly updates its security features to whatever is the newest, most secure system available. Hardison keeps track of these things as a hobby.

When they get to the bank, the guard at the entrance of the parking lot asks for an account number. Eliot recites a string of numbers. Hardison glances at Parker in the rearview mirror- they both know modern accounts have nine numbers, but Eliot only gives seven. The guard waits for two more numbers. Eliot just raises his brow. The guard enters the digits into the computer and his jaw drops. He lifts the barrier for them without another word.

"That's an old account," Parker says. Eliot nods.

"Yeah."

Eliot leads them from the parking lot into the dark, imposing building. Hardison's not used to going into a legitimate bank for a non-criminal purpose. Actually, maybe this is for a criminal purpose. Eliot still hasn't told them _what the hell they're doing here._

Eliot goes up to the desk. The woman there smiles at him.

"I'd like to visit account 9581519," Eliot says to her.

"Account 9581519?" the woman at the desk repeats.

"Yes," Eliot says. "Is that a problem?"

"No, sir. I just need to get the manager." The woman hurries into the back office. Eliot sighs in irritation.

"You know, you could take this time to tell us what we're about to see," Hardison says.

"It's easier to tell you when you can see it," Eliot says. He glances around. "It's _his_ stash."

"His? You mean Elof's?" Parker says, unable to keep the excitement from her hushed voice. Eliot nods. "Sweet!"

"Why didn't you tell us you knew where it was?" Hardison asks.

"I wasn't sure how you'd take it," Eliot says. He turns back to the desk as the woman returns from the back office. She doesn't come alone- on her careful, steady arm is an ancient-looking dude in a suit. The ancient dude has a broad smile when he sees Eliot. Eliot's expression is more shocked than pleased.

"You're finally back," the ancient dude says. "I knew you would be."

"I didn't expect to see you again," Eliot says. "You should have retired by now."

"My duties are more ceremonial than anything else," the ancient dude says. "Do you have the key?" Eliot nods. He pulls out a little metal cylinder with small holes drilled into the sides. "Excellent. Katerina will show you to the vault." He nods to the woman who brought him out. She helps him into a chair before walking out from behind the desk.

"This way." Katerina begins down the hall. Eliot, Hardison, and Parker follow her through several security checkpoints, all of which she opens with her access card. Hardison can see Parker's fingers itching to grab the card. She behaves herself, though, all the way to a door far below the ground level.

"I can stay if you wish, sir, but you don't need me to access your vault," Katerina says.

"That'll be all. Thank you," Eliot says. Katerina nods.

"Of course, sir." She walks away. Eliot puts the key in the lock. Hardison can hear the successively louder clicks as larger and larger tumblers move into place. The door to the vault swings out toward them.

"You ready?" Eliot says. Hardison isn't sure Eliot's talking to them.

"Hell yeah. I been waiting two years to find this guy," he says anyway.

"I wouldn't have thought it would be an actual vault," Parker muses. "Then again, it is more secure than a cave…" Eliot nods and walks into the vault. Hardison and Parker walk in after him.

Hardison likes to think that he's grown accustomed to loot. He's seen gold and treasure enough times, he should be used to it. What is in this vault, though, is not your ordinary booty.

Tapestries and portraits line the walls, hung on thin ropes attached to the junctures of the ceilings. Piles of wood carvings preserved in resin or plated in gold are stacked on tables on the left side of the vault. There is a surprising amount of gold and silver towards the back of the vault, but Hardison overlooks that to see the table in front of the metals. It's filled with random objects- a doll, a jewelry box, some books, shoes, a birdcage, a clock, to name a few. On the right is a table loaded down with only books.

"It's his books!" Hardison is shaking with anticipation. "It's _his books!_ The stories he must have in there-"

"How did you find this place?" Parker says, turning to Eliot. The hitter has his arms crossed over his chest.

"There's more to the story than what I told you before," he says. "I…I wasn't ready to tell it then."

"Are you ready to tell it now?" Parker says. Eliot nods.

"Yeah." He stares at the table of random objects as if they're the ones telling him the story. "Elof survived the bomb. It took him a couple days to be able to move again, but he got out of there. He made his way back to Poland to look for his family."

"Did any of them make it?" Hardison says, tearing his eyes away from the books. Eliot shakes his head.

"The records were a mess. He has to sift through a lot of them himself, cataloguing it all for future reference. There's so many people who were just gassed right off, then so many that died from disease and starvation later. Elof hasn't even met six million people, but six million Jewish people were killed. By the time he has the evidence of his family's deaths, he already knows they must be gone."

"Elof doesn't know what to do after that. He's in terrible physical condition, from the bomb and from not sleeping, eating, or drinking enough while he catalogued as many of the Nazi records as he could. He ends up in a hospital for a while, and when they discharge him, he wanders through the wreckage of Eastern Europe. He tells himself that the Nazis were an anomaly, that nothing else like them could happen again. Elof had never seen anything like it before, so he told himself there'd never be anything like it again." Eliot sighs. "Then he gets to Russia, to the center of the newly christened U.S.S.R. And Elof sees a lot of what he read in the records playing out in a different language and a different place."

"What does he do?" Hardison says. He finds he cannot speak above a certain volume anymore; the story seems to demand quiet.

"He wants to do a lot of things. Mostly he wants to die and stay dead," Eliot says. "He doesn't see the point anymore. His family is gone, wiped out by human cruelty, by racism and fascism. He can't kid himself that they died so that no one else would suffer like they did, because it's happening again. It will keep happening, Elof realizes, until humanity can finally get its head out of its ass and figure out they're all the same. He's a thousand years old and they don't seem any closer to that conclusion than they were when he was a boy."

"What then?" Parker says. "What does he do if he can't die?"

"He does what he can," Eliot answers. "Elof knows he can sit around and wail about his fate, or he can at least try to save innocent people. He becomes a spy just as the Cold War gets going between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R."

"For which side?"

"Both, kinda." Eliot smirks. "He makes sure that both sides have enough information to sabotage each other but not enough to actually start a war with each other. By the time the Berlin Wall comes down, Elof controls a good portion of the CIA and the KGB."

"Impressive," Hardison remarks.

"Yeah. After that, things get harder. Bad guys get smaller but more dangerous. The Internet changes the game entirely- there's no way to eavesdrop on an email. You have to intercept and decrypt them almost like you do letters. Elof figures out that staying in the CIA and the KGB is bringing him closer to bureaucracy than it is to helping people, so he says goodbye to both of them and starts working on his own. He knows enough to get into the places that he thinks he's needed. Sometimes he makes the wrong call," Eliot says. "In the nineties, global intelligence becomes strong enough that they get there before he does. They actually start chasing him down, which is his sign to get out of the game. Problem is, he's kinda used to sneaking around and cracking heads. So Elof sets up himself a new identity as freelancer. He gets into criminal work and eventually he forgets why he started acting like this in the first place."

Eliot pauses for a moment. The air seems to tremble with the weight of the story, of what happened to the man who put all this here. Parker turns to Hardison, her face apprehensive. Hardison can't voice the question, that unsaid word that lingers between them and Eliot.

"Until," Eliot finally says, "until he's hired by Victor Dubenich to steal back airplane designs from Bering Aerospace." The heavy air rushes out of the room like a dam broke. Eliot lets himself look at Parker and Hardison again. His eyes, which have always seemed dark and knowing, now shine with the burden of years the number of which Hardison can hardly comprehend. Eliot looks like a huge weight has been lifted from his shoulders, yet he bites down on his lip as he looks at the other two.

"You're Elof," Parker says. "This is your vault." Eliot nods.

"I haven't been here in a long while," he says. "Not since 46. That guy we saw outside was here then too. It was his first day as a manager."

"He was waiting for you," Parker says.

"I think so, yeah."

"Well," Hardison says. "This does explain why you suck with computers." That's not what he meant to say, but it does make Eliot's face lighten.

"You try learning how to deal with machines when you're my age, see how you do," he says, the normal surliness coming back to his voice.

"You could learn how to be a spy in a few months but you can't learn how to use a laptop in three years? That's just sad, bro," Hardison says. Eliot laughs.

"It was more than a few months."

"Yeah, yeah, make your excuses. Let me ask you something, if you're actually a Viking, why do you have a Southern drawl?" Hardison says. "That don't make any sense."

"It throws people off. I picked it up from an American intelligence officer in 52," Eliot replies. "She was one of the best agents I've ever met."

"She?" Hardison repeats.

"Women make better spies than men. Better emotional control," Eliot says.

"Plus we're invisible," Parker says, wandering over to the table with the books. The men follow her.

"She's right. Men in charge rarely look twice at a woman," Eliot says. "Well, look at em as potential spies."

"How much do these cover?" Parker asks, running her fingers along the spine of the nearest book.

"Everything I thought was important. I started at the beginning and I stopped before I shipped off to London in 38," Eliot says.

"Did you write anything down after that?" Hardison says. Eliot shrugs.

"Didn't see the point of it. Most of what I wrote down was family stuff." Parker looks up at the art hanging over their heads. She turns around, surveying the room. "What?"

"You have likenesses of most of your family, right?" Parker says.

"Yeah."

"I want to see Idunn and Dagny," Parker says. Eliot blinks. He starts walking towards the back of the vault. Parker is on his heels, but Hardison lags behind. He has this sudden vision of Idunn as Viking version of Parker, and he doesn't know if he can handle all the implications of that.

But Eliot stops in front of a weaving that has three people on it, none of them blonde. One is clearly the young Eliot, his face unlined and his hair braided back out of his face. The woman next to him has bright red braids and smiling brown eyes. The girl between them has her mother's hair and her father's eyes.

"That's them," Eliot says. "Elof, Idunn, and Dagny." Parker leans against Eliot, her head on his shoulder.

"They're beautiful," she says. Eliot nods.

"Yeah. I'd almost…" He trails off. Hardison comes around Eliot's other side. He rests his hand against the small of Eliot's back.

"You promised her you'd love again," Hardison says. "Did you?"

"Not like I loved her. Not until now, anyway." Eliot turns his head to look at Hardison. "That's why I brought you two here." A slow, shy smile creeps onto Hardison's face. He looks from Eliot to Parker, who has the same smile.

"I like your family, Eliot," she says. "Or should I call you Elof now?"

"God, no. Elof's a terrible name," Eliot replies, most of the tenderness gone from his voice. Parker giggles. "Seriously, don't call me that."

"I won't! I won't!"

"You know what we should do," Hardison says as he looks at the portrait next to the weaving. "We should make you a big family tree. I can make a program and we can print it out so you can hang it up-"

"It's all in the books, Hardison."

"Yeah, yeah, but it'd be cool to see all of it laid out, wouldn't it?" Hardison says.

"It's twelve hundred years of people! It'd take you the rest of your life!" Eliot says. Hardison shrugs.

"But then you'd have it," he says. Eliot pauses.

"Do we get to be on the tree?" Parker asks.

"I don't know. That'd be a little confusing," Hardison replies. "Eliot having all these people attached to him. And where would we put Nate and Sophie?"

"Maybe we'd make a separate one for us," Parker says.

"That could work."

"You two are nuts," Eliot says finally. "Let's go get the books. Be careful, they're delicate."

"Wait, are you actually gonna let us make the tree?" Hardison says.

"You'll never be able to tell me you're bored," Eliot answers. Hardison laughs and they head back to the table with the books.


	4. Chapter 4

Nate and Sophie sit in the café, sipping their drinks as they wait. It's been a while since they've seen the other three, but the rest of their 'family' is never far from their minds.

"Do you think Eliot's told them yet?" Nate asks.

"Told them what?" Sophie says, watching the traffic on the street.

"That's he's Elof."

"If he hasn't, he will soon," Sophie says. "He's waited long enough to tell someone." She breathes in the steam from her tea. "Do you think we should tell him we know?"

"Ah, it can wait. We can tell him when we give him his Christmas present," Nate says. Sophie looks at her fiancée to see him smiling devilishly.

"I don't know that you can call people presents, Nate," she says with a smile of her own. "And we don't know that this is the real thing yet."

"We're about to find out." Nate nods at something behind Sophie. She turns to see an elderly woman being walked into the café by a girl, probably her granddaughter. Sophie recognizes the woman from the photographs.

"Ella Rosenblum?" Nate calls. The woman and the girl look towards them. Nate and Sophie stand as the two women approach them. Sophie holds out her hand as Nate comes around the table.

"I'm Sophie, we spoke on the phone," she says. The woman takes her hand with a firm grip.

"It's nice to meet you in person, Sophie. Call me Ella. This is my granddaughter, Rachel." The girl nods.

"Good to meet you both. This is Nate, my partner." Sophie gestures to Nate, who reaches his hand out as well.

"A pleasure, Ella. Have a seat." The newcomers take seats on one side of the table. Sophie slides her drink over to sit beside Nate.

"Now, Ella, you said you had a note from your mother, from the Holocaust," Sophie says. Ella nods.

"I was four months old when the Nazis came for us," she says. "My mother managed to wean me before they got us to the camp, which was fortunate. There was a woman who would come in, a nurse, and she smuggled the babies out in her bag. When she smuggled me out, my mother made sure that I was wearing this." Ella lifts a chain from the folds of her shirt. A silver locket dangles from the chain, catching the light from the windows. "It was seven years before I opened it, and no one else had thought to do that before. My mother had written a note to her cousin. Her cousin hadn't been with us when we were taken, and she begged in this note that I go to him. Of course, by the time the note got to anyone who could actually go looking for him, he was long gone. They told me he'd been killed in action."

"Do you have it with you? The note?" Nate asks. Rachel reaches into her purse.

"My mom took it to a conservation specialist several years ago," she says, pulling out a laminated sheet. Rachel holds the sheet out to Sophie, who accepts it with careful fingers. She and Nate read over the note in the laminate. It's crinkled with years of being folded and unfolded. The text is in German.

"Your cousin's name is Elof," Nate says. He looks at Sophie, who returns the glance before turning back to Ella.

"Yes. It was an unusual name then, as it is now, but the government people did seem to know who she was talking about," Ella says. "I was named for him, you know."

"Why are you interested in this note?" Rachel asks. "You didn't say on the phone."

"Well, we've been doing a lot of research into the Holocaust lately, especially those who survived," Nate says. "When we found your name, Ella, we were fairly sure we'd found who we'd been looking for."

"What do you mean?" Ella asks, voice cautious. Sophie gives the note back to Rachel, smiling.

"We'd like to tell you a story…"


End file.
